THE POWER OF THE PERSON:
ON THE NOTHING BUTNESS OF HUMANICS
by
Henry J. Paar, Ph.D. Distinguished Springfield Professor of Humanics
And I always thought: the very simplest words Must be enough. When I say what things are like Everyone's heart must be torn to shreds. That you'll go down if you don't stand up for yourself Surely you see that. -- Bertolt Brecht Alben W. Barkley, the long-time congressman and famous VEEP under President Harry S. Truman said, "The best audience is one that is intelligent, well-educated and a little drunk." As I look at you, I realize that you are intelligent and well-educated and I know that two out of three is not bad -- but, just the same, I wish you were all a little drunk. Perhaps the wine and cheese the Academic Dean so kindly agreed to provide following my speech should have been available before I begin. Never mind. I do hope you will stay for refreshments and that we shall have a chance to discuss the Nothing Butness of Humanics. I arrive at the end of my run as Professor of Humanics somewhat out of breath, a bit weary, a trifle wiser and carrying the residue of mixed feelings. The thoughts I express today emerge from these perceptions, emotions and actions. I believe, by the way, that your thoughts also emerge from your perceptions, feelings and movements, that thinking cannot be done in isolation, that thoughts are products of our whole being, and that the triangle of spirit/mind/body symbolizes well the reality of that wholeness. I am saying nothing now about the quality of these thoughts. I am emphasizing only the wholistic basis from which they spring. I assume that you will judge the quality of my thoughts today, just as I have had occasion to assess the quality of the ideas presented by my predecessors who have served as Springfield Distinguished Professor of Humanics. I do not agree with everything they (and other past and current contributors to the history and tradition of Springfield College) have had to say about humanics, but I have learned much from them. Actually, it is more accurate for me to say that I have accepted from them whatever fit into my well-developed system of biases -- and the rest dropped out because, good though it may be for some people, it found no hook in me on which to fasten. Thus I do not quarrel with the slogans we all hear and perhaps even give lip-service to. You know what I mean: the whole person in the whole world, service to humankind, the triangle, and so forth. But I recognize them to be little more than slogans and rhetorical devices with which we club each other over the head with self-righteousness. However, I find it exceedingly easy to accept some ideas which some of you either reject or hold in serious question. Thus, when Seth Arsenian says that humanics is more functionalist than essentialist, more empirical and pragmatic than philosophical, more applied than pure, I find myself saying yes, yes, yes because I think humanics is concerned with doing, with utilizing with applying. All of these matters are relative and humanics is, I think, just a bit more of this than of that. Or is it? Is there anything to it at all? Some of you appear to accept humanics as an absolute, some as relative, some dismiss it as nothing and some (perhaps most) are simply indifferent to it. I make that last comment primarily on the basis of the response I received to my Humanics Newsletter Number Two in which I asked faculty and administrators to react to my proposal to make humanics more central to our All-College Requirements. Out of some 140 possible replies, I received exactly 20 (plus one from a student). There is valuable information in that datum. Something like 120 people did not respond, including about 110 members of the faculty, to a proposition that a portion of our curriculum might better represent what is generally thought to be the philosophy of the college! Do you find that incredible? Probably no more than I do. Our consistently poor attendance at faculty meetings tells us, at the very least, that not much of a response to most issues can be expected. Please note that I have not claimed knowledge about why I received a response of only 14 percent, or why we do not attend meetings, and so forth. I simply accept these findings as evidence that these matters are lower on the priority lists of most of us than I would like them to be.
Incidentally, I fared very much better in response to my proposal this year as Humanics Professor than I did last year as Henry Paar. Last year, I received exactly one response. Obviously, I have much more power as HP, HP than I do as plain HP. What shall I do after today when I shall be stripped of all that power, when I drop from a 14 percent response to only a .7 percent response?
But wait. I am both over and understating the case. Of that total number of responses received, 5 were delivered orally. Of the 15 written responses, 2 were as follows: In response to my question, "May I hear from you?" two said, "Yes." Period. And one person analyzed my query whether HP, HP equals HP2. The answer is "No." Only 13 actually were addressed to the issue. That constitutes only 9 percent of the possible responses. Compared to the response of last year, .7 percent, I shall then not be very much less powerful next year when I am again plain HP. Whew! That's a relief! I want to thank these people for their thoughtful and enlightening comments: Mark Ehman, Marty Dosick, Gene Rich, Bill Considine, Cliff Keeney, Tom Ruscio, Tom Bernard, Roberta Heston, Ken Childs, Sean O'Connor, Jean Ross, Peggy Dreger, Val Olmstead -- and Mitch Finnegan, a highly perceptive student.
I said before that I arrive at the end of my run as Professor of Humanics somewhat out of breath. I feel the way I imagine the runners do who carry the Olympic flame from Greece to the new site of the Olympic Games: I have done nothing notable to earn entry to the Games but -- ah! it is a thrill to carry the torch for a brief time. I have been thrilled.
I have also been scared. Scared that I might stumble and fall. Scared that I might run in the wrong direction. Indeed, I have been told that I have done that very thing. In my earnest desire to increase faculty participation in faculty meetings, I have been told that I have been unrealistic; that my desire is only a fantasy incapable of fulfillment. That may be correct.
In my eagerness to talk about humanics with some younger faculty, I have also been told that I was not discussing the real world; that, indeed, I did not sound real at all. That may be correct, too. I know that my work as a psychotherapist has made me unable to share in the "reality" of more than one person at a time. I should tell you that I do not in any event accept a flat-out, objective reality which we all experience. For me, reality is only what is perceived to be real. So there is no completely common reality, including Springfield College, for all of us to experience. In psychotherapy, I labor at and am accustomed to perceiving the reality of the client, to see the world through his or her eyes -- and I have become rather good at doing that. In fact, the better I become the less able I am to trust reality as perceived and reported by groups of people, including people constituting the whole of Springfield College or of parts thereof. And that has scared me. Often I find myself in opposition to policies, practices and proposals. That does not scare me. It feels correct to question group reality, which can only be unreal since it must be the outcome of compromises that destroy individual reality. Here is what really scares me: me, speaking for group reality; me, speaking for policies; me, speaking for the philosophy of the College; me, being Professor of Humanics! I thank the Academic Dean and the President for appointing me to this position, but I more swiftly thank them that my term of office has been for only nine months. Out of my biased attempt to speak about humanics I have tended to become a scold and a nag saying, in effect, you must see things my way, do things my way, attend these meetings, participate, be involved, affect Springfield College and be affected by it. That is nonsense, of course -- to many people. It is only one view of reality at this time in this place.
These realizations have caused me to try to find the minimum reality of humanics -- if, indeed, there is anything to that word at all. It may be that there is nothing more to it than the flame I have been carrying: heat, with no substance, a symbol. We live constantly with and by myths and symbols. Unless we are educated to them, that is a little bit like being drunk or, if you prefer, being in an altered state of consciousness, because they are only expressions of group reality. Myths and symbols do unite the elite into "in" groups, but they abandon the heathen to cold nether worlds. And so we, in the name of humanics, abandon those not in "our" group. Must we? I assume that the human race is growing to value life more than symbols so that we shall neither die for them nor turn crazy in defense of them. Humanics carries the flavor of the human, which suggests we could abandon the very term humanics if it is no more than a symbol which divides humans. I suspect we prefer to respect people more than symbols. To try to find the minimum reality of humanics, I need to say what I think it is not. Mark Ehman and Martin Dosick, in memoranda in response to mine (all of which were sent to you), call attention to what Mark believes are faulty assumptions from which I start and Marty believes are faulty (or incomplete) educational practices in which we engage in the name of humanics. To answer them fully here would embroil me in arguments not germane to my present purpose. I respect these colleagues but I must state that humanics as I see it is not based on the assumptions Mark ascribed to me; for example, that only an alumnus can be the conveyor of humanics or that the study of humankind is co-extensive with humanics. I hope you will see why that is so in a few minutes. And neither is humanics dependent upon the educational conditions Marty specifies, namely, more administrative support for humanistic teaching. I hope you will see why that also is so shortly. Humanics is not...a lot of things. Let me note some. Humanics is not what we wear. It is neither business suit nor gym suit, dresses or slacks, fashionable or old clothing, beards or make-up, short hair, long hair or no hair at all. Humanics is not how we spend our time. Working, playing, vegetating, arguing, loving, watching, speaking, listening, reading, laughing, sighing, exercising, dreaming -- all are neither dependent upon nor superior to humanics. Humanics is not words. There are many words written and spoken about Humanics but words about something are not the thing itself. Take as illustration, the issue of whether words can hurt. They cannot, but our attitude toward the use of certain words can. If your attitude says the word "triangle" best symbolizes the wholistic nature of people, you might be annoyed if I asserted that a square more accurately represents us because it displays the four-sided nature of us, or that the tetrahedron is superior to that triangle because it is a solid. More to the point, if your attitude says that a certain barnyard epithet which I used in one of my Humanics Newsletters is dirty, then even its playful use becomes offensive and deliberate efforts to desensitize you to its use will be to no avail. But if your attitude says that particular word is forceful, then it does not offend.
One cannot therefore be identified as a supporter or non-supporter of Humanics by the words one uses. One can pretend that way but it all is for naught. The receiver's attitude controls the impact of the message. Thus, I might say, "You're a Humanics freak!" Some of you might be offended, some of you might be delighted and some of you would have no reaction at all. Words are not humanics, and humanics is not words.
Humanics is not unique to Springfield College. Whatever it is, I found it to exist in at least the psychology department of one of the three other schools I attended. I believe that it, or at least my version of it, exists in many other places. What does appear to be unique to Springfield College is our tradition of greeting each other on campus. I have visited many other campuses over the years and I visited an extraordinary number this year while on recruiting trips made possible by the very welcome humanics travel account, but I have never found another place where people smile or say hello as you pass by. In fact, I have often smiled or said hello on other campuses only to receive puzzled looks from others, as if a simple greeting were unheard-of from a stranger. I know, of course, that greetings are a minor matter and that usually they are superficial and meaningless. Nevertheless, I like them -- and I deplore the unwillingness of many of us to perpetuate this tradition. The expenditure of energy for a nod or a smile must be minimal, but the impact of that expenditure is, I think, major. Humanics is not happy students. Those often-smiling faces we see on campus saying, "Hi" are not telling us they are happy. Those of us who really come to know some students well, which means doing most of the listening instead of most of the talking, know that their smiles mask much hurt and pain. Attribution theory tells us we attribute to ourselves and to others the expressions we see on our faces. Thus, I may be running with effort or while facing the sun but a passerby may attribute to me some deep worry because of the frown on my face. And so we attribute happiness to our smiling students. Perhaps we should abandon the tradition of greeting one another after all in the interest of not misinterpreting each other! Humanics is not happy faculty, either. When we see a smiling face we tend to smile back. This principle of reciprocity might lead us to conclude that Springfield College faculty members are happy. Not so. I know you know that so I won't elaborate on it. Humanics is not racial harmony. I speak loosely here inasmuch as I know there is no such thing as the white race, the black race and so on. I know, too, that the human race is divided foolishly along lines of skin pigmentation and that people imagine that some individual differences are racial differences. We really should understand these matters here as readily as we understand that the Old Testament historically preceded the New, or that the Basketball Hall of Fame is not devoted to either readers of poetry or to women players of basketball. I would like to see us destroy the subtle and invisible barriers to racial harmony and to sexual discrimination but I do not expect it since we have not yet learned how to destroy the gross barriers of ignorance and fear. We really do mirror the country. Does the name Orangeburg conjure up images for you? As a college, its proper name is South Carolina State College, SCSC. My wife (Marge) and I visited there this year and discovered that the faculty feel a national slight regarding an event of some real significance. And well they should. Orangeburg was where the militia was called in and some students were, as they put it now, massacred -- before Kent State. Most of us remember Kent State but few remember Orangeburg. Why? Could it be because Kent State is white and Orangeburg is black? Do you remember the shootings at Jackson State? That was before Kent State, too. Jackson State is black. The students at all three institutions who were killed or wounded were human beings whose loss must be remembered by us as the grossest form of anti-humanics. I am beginning to catalog our shortcomings. We have many, indeed, but I do not wish to overwhelm us today, so I'll shift my sights slightly to mention just a few more things humanics is not. Humanics is not psychology, much as it pains me to say that. I hope always that psychologists would have an edge in understanding human behavior and the personality of any one person. But it is clear that psychologists do not have an exclusive purchase on such understanding. The poets, novelists and playwrights, to name just one group, have provided us and continue to provide us with brilliant insights regarding people. It is the psychologists' somewhat difficult scientific task to try to determine the truth or falsity of those insights, which is at best a meager slice of humanics . Humanics is not basketball. With all due respect to Ed Bilik and his excellent team, Indiana, Virginia, Brigham Young and probably 100 other teams are superior to ours. Humanics can emerge through basketball, as it can through psychology and any other activity we offer on campus, but it is not basketball and it most certainly is not the Basketball Hall of Fame. Humanics, in short, is not any subject we offer or discipline we embrace or activity we sponsor or rhetoric we utter or tradition we honor. No, it is none of these or any of the other shibboleths we cite. And yet humanics is here, as it is in many other places. It is here especially because we acknowledge it, not because we are special. I treasure that acknowledgment just as I treasure Springfield College, athlete's feet and all. Springfield is a modest college and would be less than modest were it not for its allegiance to humanics. Yet we hear much silly boasting and bragging among us, as If we were great. I deplore it. I love it when I hear persons external to the College state favorable things about us, as I did recently when I attended a symposium in Illinois on exercise and mental health. A participant there, a psychologist from Alabama, then unknown to me, declared to the group I was chatting with when he saw my name tag, "He comes from the best physical education school in the world." I felt good and accepted his praise on behalf of my colleagues. That, however, is different from self-praise. Our self-praise results from underlying feelings of inadequacy and fear that we shall not be recognized. And we are inadequate in facilities, diversity of programs, numbers of personnel, salaries and the moneys to repair those inadequacies. But we are not inadequate in quality of personnel and we most especially are not inadequate in humanics, despite its not being a proper philosophy, choice of study or place of business. I know that, phenomonologically speaking, humanics does not exist. It is only what each of us makes it, and each conception cannot be fully known to anyone else. This is my effort to make my conception known to you.
Humanics is nothing but the release of the power of the person by another person. In a less basic sense, I see humanics as humane contact or, perhaps better, as persons making humane contact. My mentor and friend, the fourth Distinguished Professor of Humanics, Holmes VanDerbeck, was and is correct in declaring humanics to be neither noun nor adjective. It is a happening. One does humanics. I wish to specify the precise happening it is, although it is such a difficult word and my language skills are so poor that I shall often treat it as if it were a noun or an adjective. Humanics is people making humane contact. That is to say, it is nothing -- until people are in contact. It is no more than an intervening variable, neither an independent nor a dependent variable. Just as Harry Stack Sullivan, the second of the first two great American psychiatrists, defined personality as a hypothetical entity which cannot be isolated from interpersonal relationships, so I define Humanics as a hypothetical construct that comes into being only when two or more persons are in humane contact. I am not speaking of human contact with all its enormous variety, but of humane contact with its implication of decency and benefit to humankind. I am also not speaking of doing-good with its implication of secular, if not religious, salvation, but of tapping the power of the person with all its enormous richness. Humane contact is concrete and immediate. It is not abstract and philosophical. A humane idea is nothing more than mental exercise. While that may be extremely pleasant and harmless, it also is ineffective regarding humanics. Let me be clear that I am not against exercise, mental or otherwise; in fact, there is much to be said for it. Just the same, it is an ineffective bit of behavior when it deprives one of human contact, just as humane ideas held only in the mind deprive one of humane contact. When I am running fairly long distances I often have humane (and other) ideas, but they are only pleasant or exciting thoughts until I do something with them. Committing them to paper after running, as I have done with most of the comments I am making today, moves me beyond mental exercise -- but not into humanics. Perhaps that step might be called preparation, just as my actual speaking might be called preparation -- but neither is humanics. It is only when I, we, act, when I, we, make humane contact that we have humanics. We behave with people; not toward them, because that makes the others objects; with them, because that keeps people equal. Humanics is an action that characterizes an action-oriented College. Springfield is not a bastion of scholarship, with all the immobile might that that term implies. Scholarship here is not enough; teaching here is not enough; competition here is not enough. We are people oriented to people in scholarship and in doing, in teaching and in learning, in competition and in play, giving, taking, sharing, experiencing each other. Some of us, indeed, emphasize knowing. Most of us, however, emphasize knowing for doing. All of us focus on humankind as the subject of our knowledge and action. It is tempting (too tempting, really, and too stereotypical for a psychologist) to draw a relationship between humanics and sexuality. With some reluctance I pass up that opportunity. I note simply that making humane contact runs the gamut from creativity with another person to pleasurable sharing with another person, from the discover of one's personal power through academic pursuits to that discovery through cocurricular activities. Humanics is relationships with people geared toward the release of their potential. But life is not all contact. It is important to also withdraw from contact. Work is good. Play is good. We need both. It is unreal to always be in humane contact. In fact, that is a danger experienced in the families of many Springfield College faculty. I speak of the faculty members who are humanics-oriented at work, who give it their all on the job, and then have nothing left when at home. It is important to withdraw, but it is healthier to withdraw from constant humane contact on the job and to save some of it for the people who actually are most important in our lives, namely, our families. It is also important for us to engage in other human contact, such as being honestly angry with each other, arguing stoutly for our convictions, challenging indifference, hating injustice and indulging our whims. We are not humanic automatons or automatic humanoids. We are real people with real feelings who have the capacity to occasionally be in humane contact.
How do we put ourselves in humane contact? No doubt there are a thousand ways. I believe we are in best humane contact when we behave in nonthreatening ways to others, when we accept people for who they are even while rejecting pieces of their behavior, when we challenge others to growth while starting where they are now, when we, in short, stop feeling superior but feel and act as co-learners and co-experiencers in the dance of life. Then we have a Ken Childs and a Barbara Melrose helping us to perceive accurately, a John Cox and an Ed Sims facilitating us to feel fully, a Bill Considine and a Frank Torre enabling us to think or plan clearly, and a Mary Noble and a Doug Parker and a Jim Robertson assisting us to move gracefully or powerfully or meaningfully.
That kind of humane contact carries the capacity to release potentialities in human beings. Instead of asking, "Why?" when we are in humane contact, we ask "Why not?" of a person. We assume that here in this person, in this student, say, are potentialities and we set about the joint discovery of what needs to be done to actualize them.
What I am saying is that humanics, that regnant ideal, is at bottom a stance, a potential for movement, a readiness to respond in humane ways and an occasional carrying through of that readiness. To be self-conscious of that ideal is to impose restraints upon our actions so that we are less likely to be entirely selfish. To be self-conscious of that ideal is to enhance our potentiality for stepping into the shoes of another person and to possibly respond appropriately to that person. Humanics, then, that impossible ideal, provides the basis for whatever value Springfield College has. It is the opening to the power of the person. And for the most part it is done through uncelebrated humane contacts. None of us owns humanics. None of us owns Springfield College. None of us owns the earth. In each instance we can only experience connectedness: connectedness to earth, to Springfield College, to humanics. Earth, our planet, is the foundation or grounding to which we are connected. Humanics is the Springfield College foundation to which we are connected. Unlike Earth, humanics has no substance so our grounding must be through action . The world, the College, people, we -- all of us -- fall short. That must be acknowledged. Here, though, is the strength we do possess: we can help our students to fled their own power. And here is what can and must be done to achieve that: to make humane contact with our students. Such action brings us as close to wholeness in spirit, mend and body as we can manage. That simple and traditional action can prevent us from singing "Glory be to Springfield College for how great we are." We are not great. Our opportunities are great. Let us sing instead, "Glory be to the people with whom we have chances to work and relate." Our task is to tease out potentialities instead of luxuriating in finished products. The process, not the outcome, is important. It is useless and anti-humanics to despair that students do not know our languages, whether English, psychology, chemistry, or any other, well. We would have no scholarly opportunities if they did. It is helpful and the stuff of humanics to see their potentialities to learn these languages and to design ways to make that possible. We do not design ways if we are looking for finished products. We do design ways if we see the value of process. It is useless and anti-humanics to merely stamp out replicas of ourselves, flattering though that may feel. It is helpful and the stuff of humanics to release the potentialities for growth of students to become their own persons, erratic though that may seem. With these observations I should be finished.
But these are all words, little more than mental exercise and only preparation for the action that humanics requires. I propose two actions. The first action is to celebrate the release of the power of the person. To that end, Marge and I have established a small fund to provide a humanics award to the person or persons who clearly demonstrate the tapping of potentialities in other people. Six, seven, and eight years ago, President Locklin awarded prizes for innovative teaching. Along with Cliff Keeney and Hal Harlow, I was one of the fortunate winners. That prize formed the nucleous of the fund to which Marge and I have been contributing ever since. We intended it to be a scholarship fund, but this year, as it came to initial maturity, I became obsessed with humanics, and proposed to Marge that we change it to a Humanics Prize. She readily agreed. We discussed it with our son, daughter and son-in-law who supported us completely and then I proposed it to President Locklin who not only enthusiastically accepted the idea but made some sound suggestions about implementing it. Marge and I shall continue to add to the fund in the hope that annual interest from it will provide a modest prize to be awarded, perhaps annually, at some appropriate College function. Each recipient, who will be determined by the Paar family with the advice of current and past Distinguished Springfield Professors of Humanics, will have done more than to make humane contact. If that were the sole requirement, I would arrange to have the first award go posthumously to my mother-in-law, Helen Eaves Wyatt. That woman, as some of you know, was an unforgettable character. Her life was one of heavy weather but she quietly and without self-aggrandizement made significant humane contact by feeding hungry and disabled people. I cherish her memory for that, but more is required for this award. Each recipient of the Humanics Prize must have released, through humane contact, the power of the person. We intend to look far and near for such practitioners of humanics and we hope to award the first prize next year at about this time.
I mentioned two actions. The second action I propose is for all of us to get into humane contact now to see what we can do for each other. Touching is a form of humane contact. I wish I could touch each of you in some significant way. Failing that, let me request instead that as you leave this room you risk putting an arm around one or more colleagues or that you even touch another person's hand quietly. I imagine you will be uncomfortable with that, which may be the chief reason why we are uncomfortable with humanics. It gets too close. But let's try it anyway!
To humanely touch everyone with whom we make contact: "...be this thy task, Springfeldians, through all the years." May 14, 1981

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THE POWER OF THE PERSON:
ON THE NOTHING BUTNESS OF HUMANICS
by
Henry J. Paar, Ph.D. Distinguished Springfield Professor of Humanics
And I always thought: the very simplest words Must be enough. When I say what things are like Everyone's heart must be torn to shreds. That you'll go down if you don't stand up for yourself Surely you see that. -- Bertolt Brecht Alben W. Barkley, the long-time congressman and famous VEEP under President Harry S. Truman said, "The best audience is one that is intelligent, well-educated and a little drunk." As I look at you, I realize that you are intelligent and well-educated and I know that two out of three is not bad -- but, just the same, I wish you were all a little drunk. Perhaps the wine and cheese the Academic Dean so kindly agreed to provide following my speech should have been available before I begin. Never mind. I do hope you will stay for refreshments and that we shall have a chance to discuss the Nothing Butness of Humanics. I arrive at the end of my run as Professor of Humanics somewhat out of breath, a bit weary, a trifle wiser and carrying the residue of mixed feelings. The thoughts I express today emerge from these perceptions, emotions and actions. I believe, by the way, that your thoughts also emerge from your perceptions, feelings and movements, that thinking cannot be done in isolation, that thoughts are products of our whole being, and that the triangle of spirit/mind/body symbolizes well the reality of that wholeness. I am saying nothing now about the quality of these thoughts. I am emphasizing only the wholistic basis from which they spring. I assume that you will judge the quality of my thoughts today, just as I have had occasion to assess the quality of the ideas presented by my predecessors who have served as Springfield Distinguished Professor of Humanics. I do not agree with everything they (and other past and current contributors to the history and tradition of Springfield College) have had to say about humanics, but I have learned much from them. Actually, it is more accurate for me to say that I have accepted from them whatever fit into my well-developed system of biases -- and the rest dropped out because, good though it may be for some people, it found no hook in me on which to fasten. Thus I do not quarrel with the slogans we all hear and perhaps even give lip-service to. You know what I mean: the whole person in the whole world, service to humankind, the triangle, and so forth. But I recognize them to be little more than slogans and rhetorical devices with which we club each other over the head with self-righteousness. However, I find it exceedingly easy to accept some ideas which some of you either reject or hold in serious question. Thus, when Seth Arsenian says that humanics is more functionalist than essentialist, more empirical and pragmatic than philosophical, more applied than pure, I find myself saying yes, yes, yes because I think humanics is concerned with doing, with utilizing with applying. All of these matters are relative and humanics is, I think, just a bit more of this than of that. Or is it? Is there anything to it at all? Some of you appear to accept humanics as an absolute, some as relative, some dismiss it as nothing and some (perhaps most) are simply indifferent to it. I make that last comment primarily on the basis of the response I received to my Humanics Newsletter Number Two in which I asked faculty and administrators to react to my proposal to make humanics more central to our All-College Requirements. Out of some 140 possible replies, I received exactly 20 (plus one from a student). There is valuable information in that datum. Something like 120 people did not respond, including about 110 members of the faculty, to a proposition that a portion of our curriculum might better represent what is generally thought to be the philosophy of the college! Do you find that incredible? Probably no more than I do. Our consistently poor attendance at faculty meetings tells us, at the very least, that not much of a response to most issues can be expected. Please note that I have not claimed knowledge about why I received a response of only 14 percent, or why we do not attend meetings, and so forth. I simply accept these findings as evidence that these matters are lower on the priority lists of most of us than I would like them to be.
Incidentally, I fared very much better in response to my proposal this year as Humanics Professor than I did last year as Henry Paar. Last year, I received exactly one response. Obviously, I have much more power as HP, HP than I do as plain HP. What shall I do after today when I shall be stripped of all that power, when I drop from a 14 percent response to only a .7 percent response?
But wait. I am both over and understating the case. Of that total number of responses received, 5 were delivered orally. Of the 15 written responses, 2 were as follows: In response to my question, "May I hear from you?" two said, "Yes." Period. And one person analyzed my query whether HP, HP equals HP2. The answer is "No." Only 13 actually were addressed to the issue. That constitutes only 9 percent of the possible responses. Compared to the response of last year, .7 percent, I shall then not be very much less powerful next year when I am again plain HP. Whew! That's a relief! I want to thank these people for their thoughtful and enlightening comments: Mark Ehman, Marty Dosick, Gene Rich, Bill Considine, Cliff Keeney, Tom Ruscio, Tom Bernard, Roberta Heston, Ken Childs, Sean O'Connor, Jean Ross, Peggy Dreger, Val Olmstead -- and Mitch Finnegan, a highly perceptive student.
I said before that I arrive at the end of my run as Professor of Humanics somewhat out of breath. I feel the way I imagine the runners do who carry the Olympic flame from Greece to the new site of the Olympic Games: I have done nothing notable to earn entry to the Games but -- ah! it is a thrill to carry the torch for a brief time. I have been thrilled.
I have also been scared. Scared that I might stumble and fall. Scared that I might run in the wrong direction. Indeed, I have been told that I have done that very thing. In my earnest desire to increase faculty participation in faculty meetings, I have been told that I have been unrealistic; that my desire is only a fantasy incapable of fulfillment. That may be correct.
In my eagerness to talk about humanics with some younger faculty, I have also been told that I was not discussing the real world; that, indeed, I did not sound real at all. That may be correct, too. I know that my work as a psychotherapist has made me unable to share in the "reality" of more than one person at a time. I should tell you that I do not in any event accept a flat-out, objective reality which we all experience. For me, reality is only what is perceived to be real. So there is no completely common reality, including Springfield College, for all of us to experience. In psychotherapy, I labor at and am accustomed to perceiving the reality of the client, to see the world through his or her eyes -- and I have become rather good at doing that. In fact, the better I become the less able I am to trust reality as perceived and reported by groups of people, including people constituting the whole of Springfield College or of parts thereof. And that has scared me. Often I find myself in opposition to policies, practices and proposals. That does not scare me. It feels correct to question group reality, which can only be unreal since it must be the outcome of compromises that destroy individual reality. Here is what really scares me: me, speaking for group reality; me, speaking for policies; me, speaking for the philosophy of the College; me, being Professor of Humanics! I thank the Academic Dean and the President for appointing me to this position, but I more swiftly thank them that my term of office has been for only nine months. Out of my biased attempt to speak about humanics I have tended to become a scold and a nag saying, in effect, you must see things my way, do things my way, attend these meetings, participate, be involved, affect Springfield College and be affected by it. That is nonsense, of course -- to many people. It is only one view of reality at this time in this place.
These realizations have caused me to try to find the minimum reality of humanics -- if, indeed, there is anything to that word at all. It may be that there is nothing more to it than the flame I have been carrying: heat, with no substance, a symbol. We live constantly with and by myths and symbols. Unless we are educated to them, that is a little bit like being drunk or, if you prefer, being in an altered state of consciousness, because they are only expressions of group reality. Myths and symbols do unite the elite into "in" groups, but they abandon the heathen to cold nether worlds. And so we, in the name of humanics, abandon those not in "our" group. Must we? I assume that the human race is growing to value life more than symbols so that we shall neither die for them nor turn crazy in defense of them. Humanics carries the flavor of the human, which suggests we could abandon the very term humanics if it is no more than a symbol which divides humans. I suspect we prefer to respect people more than symbols. To try to find the minimum reality of humanics, I need to say what I think it is not. Mark Ehman and Martin Dosick, in memoranda in response to mine (all of which were sent to you), call attention to what Mark believes are faulty assumptions from which I start and Marty believes are faulty (or incomplete) educational practices in which we engage in the name of humanics. To answer them fully here would embroil me in arguments not germane to my present purpose. I respect these colleagues but I must state that humanics as I see it is not based on the assumptions Mark ascribed to me; for example, that only an alumnus can be the conveyor of humanics or that the study of humankind is co-extensive with humanics. I hope you will see why that is so in a few minutes. And neither is humanics dependent upon the educational conditions Marty specifies, namely, more administrative support for humanistic teaching. I hope you will see why that also is so shortly. Humanics is not...a lot of things. Let me note some. Humanics is not what we wear. It is neither business suit nor gym suit, dresses or slacks, fashionable or old clothing, beards or make-up, short hair, long hair or no hair at all. Humanics is not how we spend our time. Working, playing, vegetating, arguing, loving, watching, speaking, listening, reading, laughing, sighing, exercising, dreaming -- all are neither dependent upon nor superior to humanics. Humanics is not words. There are many words written and spoken about Humanics but words about something are not the thing itself. Take as illustration, the issue of whether words can hurt. They cannot, but our attitude toward the use of certain words can. If your attitude says the word "triangle" best symbolizes the wholistic nature of people, you might be annoyed if I asserted that a square more accurately represents us because it displays the four-sided nature of us, or that the tetrahedron is superior to that triangle because it is a solid. More to the point, if your attitude says that a certain barnyard epithet which I used in one of my Humanics Newsletters is dirty, then even its playful use becomes offensive and deliberate efforts to desensitize you to its use will be to no avail. But if your attitude says that particular word is forceful, then it does not offend.
One cannot therefore be identified as a supporter or non-supporter of Humanics by the words one uses. One can pretend that way but it all is for naught. The receiver's attitude controls the impact of the message. Thus, I might say, "You're a Humanics freak!" Some of you might be offended, some of you might be delighted and some of you would have no reaction at all. Words are not humanics, and humanics is not words.
Humanics is not unique to Springfield College. Whatever it is, I found it to exist in at least the psychology department of one of the three other schools I attended. I believe that it, or at least my version of it, exists in many other places. What does appear to be unique to Springfield College is our tradition of greeting each other on campus. I have visited many other campuses over the years and I visited an extraordinary number this year while on recruiting trips made possible by the very welcome humanics travel account, but I have never found another place where people smile or say hello as you pass by. In fact, I have often smiled or said hello on other campuses only to receive puzzled looks from others, as if a simple greeting were unheard-of from a stranger. I know, of course, that greetings are a minor matter and that usually they are superficial and meaningless. Nevertheless, I like them -- and I deplore the unwillingness of many of us to perpetuate this tradition. The expenditure of energy for a nod or a smile must be minimal, but the impact of that expenditure is, I think, major. Humanics is not happy students. Those often-smiling faces we see on campus saying, "Hi" are not telling us they are happy. Those of us who really come to know some students well, which means doing most of the listening instead of most of the talking, know that their smiles mask much hurt and pain. Attribution theory tells us we attribute to ourselves and to others the expressions we see on our faces. Thus, I may be running with effort or while facing the sun but a passerby may attribute to me some deep worry because of the frown on my face. And so we attribute happiness to our smiling students. Perhaps we should abandon the tradition of greeting one another after all in the interest of not misinterpreting each other! Humanics is not happy faculty, either. When we see a smiling face we tend to smile back. This principle of reciprocity might lead us to conclude that Springfield College faculty members are happy. Not so. I know you know that so I won't elaborate on it. Humanics is not racial harmony. I speak loosely here inasmuch as I know there is no such thing as the white race, the black race and so on. I know, too, that the human race is divided foolishly along lines of skin pigmentation and that people imagine that some individual differences are racial differences. We really should understand these matters here as readily as we understand that the Old Testament historically preceded the New, or that the Basketball Hall of Fame is not devoted to either readers of poetry or to women players of basketball. I would like to see us destroy the subtle and invisible barriers to racial harmony and to sexual discrimination but I do not expect it since we have not yet learned how to destroy the gross barriers of ignorance and fear. We really do mirror the country. Does the name Orangeburg conjure up images for you? As a college, its proper name is South Carolina State College, SCSC. My wife (Marge) and I visited there this year and discovered that the faculty feel a national slight regarding an event of some real significance. And well they should. Orangeburg was where the militia was called in and some students were, as they put it now, massacred -- before Kent State. Most of us remember Kent State but few remember Orangeburg. Why? Could it be because Kent State is white and Orangeburg is black? Do you remember the shootings at Jackson State? That was before Kent State, too. Jackson State is black. The students at all three institutions who were killed or wounded were human beings whose loss must be remembered by us as the grossest form of anti-humanics. I am beginning to catalog our shortcomings. We have many, indeed, but I do not wish to overwhelm us today, so I'll shift my sights slightly to mention just a few more things humanics is not. Humanics is not psychology, much as it pains me to say that. I hope always that psychologists would have an edge in understanding human behavior and the personality of any one person. But it is clear that psychologists do not have an exclusive purchase on such understanding. The poets, novelists and playwrights, to name just one group, have provided us and continue to provide us with brilliant insights regarding people. It is the psychologists' somewhat difficult scientific task to try to determine the truth or falsity of those insights, which is at best a meager slice of humanics . Humanics is not basketball. With all due respect to Ed Bilik and his excellent team, Indiana, Virginia, Brigham Young and probably 100 other teams are superior to ours. Humanics can emerge through basketball, as it can through psychology and any other activity we offer on campus, but it is not basketball and it most certainly is not the Basketball Hall of Fame. Humanics, in short, is not any subject we offer or discipline we embrace or activity we sponsor or rhetoric we utter or tradition we honor. No, it is none of these or any of the other shibboleths we cite. And yet humanics is here, as it is in many other places. It is here especially because we acknowledge it, not because we are special. I treasure that acknowledgment just as I treasure Springfield College, athlete's feet and all. Springfield is a modest college and would be less than modest were it not for its allegiance to humanics. Yet we hear much silly boasting and bragging among us, as If we were great. I deplore it. I love it when I hear persons external to the College state favorable things about us, as I did recently when I attended a symposium in Illinois on exercise and mental health. A participant there, a psychologist from Alabama, then unknown to me, declared to the group I was chatting with when he saw my name tag, "He comes from the best physical education school in the world." I felt good and accepted his praise on behalf of my colleagues. That, however, is different from self-praise. Our self-praise results from underlying feelings of inadequacy and fear that we shall not be recognized. And we are inadequate in facilities, diversity of programs, numbers of personnel, salaries and the moneys to repair those inadequacies. But we are not inadequate in quality of personnel and we most especially are not inadequate in humanics, despite its not being a proper philosophy, choice of study or place of business. I know that, phenomonologically speaking, humanics does not exist. It is only what each of us makes it, and each conception cannot be fully known to anyone else. This is my effort to make my conception known to you.
Humanics is nothing but the release of the power of the person by another person. In a less basic sense, I see humanics as humane contact or, perhaps better, as persons making humane contact. My mentor and friend, the fourth Distinguished Professor of Humanics, Holmes VanDerbeck, was and is correct in declaring humanics to be neither noun nor adjective. It is a happening. One does humanics. I wish to specify the precise happening it is, although it is such a difficult word and my language skills are so poor that I shall often treat it as if it were a noun or an adjective. Humanics is people making humane contact. That is to say, it is nothing -- until people are in contact. It is no more than an intervening variable, neither an independent nor a dependent variable. Just as Harry Stack Sullivan, the second of the first two great American psychiatrists, defined personality as a hypothetical entity which cannot be isolated from interpersonal relationships, so I define Humanics as a hypothetical construct that comes into being only when two or more persons are in humane contact. I am not speaking of human contact with all its enormous variety, but of humane contact with its implication of decency and benefit to humankind. I am also not speaking of doing-good with its implication of secular, if not religious, salvation, but of tapping the power of the person with all its enormous richness. Humane contact is concrete and immediate. It is not abstract and philosophical. A humane idea is nothing more than mental exercise. While that may be extremely pleasant and harmless, it also is ineffective regarding humanics. Let me be clear that I am not against exercise, mental or otherwise; in fact, there is much to be said for it. Just the same, it is an ineffective bit of behavior when it deprives one of human contact, just as humane ideas held only in the mind deprive one of humane contact. When I am running fairly long distances I often have humane (and other) ideas, but they are only pleasant or exciting thoughts until I do something with them. Committing them to paper after running, as I have done with most of the comments I am making today, moves me beyond mental exercise -- but not into humanics. Perhaps that step might be called preparation, just as my actual speaking might be called preparation -- but neither is humanics. It is only when I, we, act, when I, we, make humane contact that we have humanics. We behave with people; not toward them, because that makes the others objects; with them, because that keeps people equal. Humanics is an action that characterizes an action-oriented College. Springfield is not a bastion of scholarship, with all the immobile might that that term implies. Scholarship here is not enough; teaching here is not enough; competition here is not enough. We are people oriented to people in scholarship and in doing, in teaching and in learning, in competition and in play, giving, taking, sharing, experiencing each other. Some of us, indeed, emphasize knowing. Most of us, however, emphasize knowing for doing. All of us focus on humankind as the subject of our knowledge and action. It is tempting (too tempting, really, and too stereotypical for a psychologist) to draw a relationship between humanics and sexuality. With some reluctance I pass up that opportunity. I note simply that making humane contact runs the gamut from creativity with another person to pleasurable sharing with another person, from the discover of one's personal power through academic pursuits to that discovery through cocurricular activities. Humanics is relationships with people geared toward the release of their potential. But life is not all contact. It is important to also withdraw from contact. Work is good. Play is good. We need both. It is unreal to always be in humane contact. In fact, that is a danger experienced in the families of many Springfield College faculty. I speak of the faculty members who are humanics-oriented at work, who give it their all on the job, and then have nothing left when at home. It is important to withdraw, but it is healthier to withdraw from constant humane contact on the job and to save some of it for the people who actually are most important in our lives, namely, our families. It is also important for us to engage in other human contact, such as being honestly angry with each other, arguing stoutly for our convictions, challenging indifference, hating injustice and indulging our whims. We are not humanic automatons or automatic humanoids. We are real people with real feelings who have the capacity to occasionally be in humane contact.
How do we put ourselves in humane contact? No doubt there are a thousand ways. I believe we are in best humane contact when we behave in nonthreatening ways to others, when we accept people for who they are even while rejecting pieces of their behavior, when we challenge others to growth while starting where they are now, when we, in short, stop feeling superior but feel and act as co-learners and co-experiencers in the dance of life. Then we have a Ken Childs and a Barbara Melrose helping us to perceive accurately, a John Cox and an Ed Sims facilitating us to feel fully, a Bill Considine and a Frank Torre enabling us to think or plan clearly, and a Mary Noble and a Doug Parker and a Jim Robertson assisting us to move gracefully or powerfully or meaningfully.
That kind of humane contact carries the capacity to release potentialities in human beings. Instead of asking, "Why?" when we are in humane contact, we ask "Why not?" of a person. We assume that here in this person, in this student, say, are potentialities and we set about the joint discovery of what needs to be done to actualize them.
What I am saying is that humanics, that regnant ideal, is at bottom a stance, a potential for movement, a readiness to respond in humane ways and an occasional carrying through of that readiness. To be self-conscious of that ideal is to impose restraints upon our actions so that we are less likely to be entirely selfish. To be self-conscious of that ideal is to enhance our potentiality for stepping into the shoes of another person and to possibly respond appropriately to that person. Humanics, then, that impossible ideal, provides the basis for whatever value Springfield College has. It is the opening to the power of the person. And for the most part it is done through uncelebrated humane contacts. None of us owns humanics. None of us owns Springfield College. None of us owns the earth. In each instance we can only experience connectedness: connectedness to earth, to Springfield College, to humanics. Earth, our planet, is the foundation or grounding to which we are connected. Humanics is the Springfield College foundation to which we are connected. Unlike Earth, humanics has no substance so our grounding must be through action . The world, the College, people, we -- all of us -- fall short. That must be acknowledged. Here, though, is the strength we do possess: we can help our students to fled their own power. And here is what can and must be done to achieve that: to make humane contact with our students. Such action brings us as close to wholeness in spirit, mend and body as we can manage. That simple and traditional action can prevent us from singing "Glory be to Springfield College for how great we are." We are not great. Our opportunities are great. Let us sing instead, "Glory be to the people with whom we have chances to work and relate." Our task is to tease out potentialities instead of luxuriating in finished products. The process, not the outcome, is important. It is useless and anti-humanics to despair that students do not know our languages, whether English, psychology, chemistry, or any other, well. We would have no scholarly opportunities if they did. It is helpful and the stuff of humanics to see their potentialities to learn these languages and to design ways to make that possible. We do not design ways if we are looking for finished products. We do design ways if we see the value of process. It is useless and anti-humanics to merely stamp out replicas of ourselves, flattering though that may feel. It is helpful and the stuff of humanics to release the potentialities for growth of students to become their own persons, erratic though that may seem. With these observations I should be finished.
But these are all words, little more than mental exercise and only preparation for the action that humanics requires. I propose two actions. The first action is to celebrate the release of the power of the person. To that end, Marge and I have established a small fund to provide a humanics award to the person or persons who clearly demonstrate the tapping of potentialities in other people. Six, seven, and eight years ago, President Locklin awarded prizes for innovative teaching. Along with Cliff Keeney and Hal Harlow, I was one of the fortunate winners. That prize formed the nucleous of the fund to which Marge and I have been contributing ever since. We intended it to be a scholarship fund, but this year, as it came to initial maturity, I became obsessed with humanics, and proposed to Marge that we change it to a Humanics Prize. She readily agreed. We discussed it with our son, daughter and son-in-law who supported us completely and then I proposed it to President Locklin who not only enthusiastically accepted the idea but made some sound suggestions about implementing it. Marge and I shall continue to add to the fund in the hope that annual interest from it will provide a modest prize to be awarded, perhaps annually, at some appropriate College function. Each recipient, who will be determined by the Paar family with the advice of current and past Distinguished Springfield Professors of Humanics, will have done more than to make humane contact. If that were the sole requirement, I would arrange to have the first award go posthumously to my mother-in-law, Helen Eaves Wyatt. That woman, as some of you know, was an unforgettable character. Her life was one of heavy weather but she quietly and without self-aggrandizement made significant humane contact by feeding hungry and disabled people. I cherish her memory for that, but more is required for this award. Each recipient of the Humanics Prize must have released, through humane contact, the power of the person. We intend to look far and near for such practitioners of humanics and we hope to award the first prize next year at about this time.
I mentioned two actions. The second action I propose is for all of us to get into humane contact now to see what we can do for each other. Touching is a form of humane contact. I wish I could touch each of you in some significant way. Failing that, let me request instead that as you leave this room you risk putting an arm around one or more colleagues or that you even touch another person's hand quietly. I imagine you will be uncomfortable with that, which may be the chief reason why we are uncomfortable with humanics. It gets too close. But let's try it anyway!
To humanely touch everyone with whom we make contact: "...be this thy task, Springfeldians, through all the years." May 14, 1981

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